Istanbul Day 3 -- Our favorite places

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We got up today feeling like old hands at the transportation thing and headed (almost) straight for the ferry to Princes' Islands, arriving 30 minutes in advance to get good seats on the outside, which had a nice breeze. The ferry trip was about an hour and a half, but biking through pine forests on an island with no cars sounded so alluring...

Hmm. By now we should have been skeptical of the guide book. But anyway, we got off the ferry into streets as crowded as Istanbul's. First souvenir stands, then a sold half-block of ice-cream stands, then restaraunts. After walking back and forth a couple of times we finally found the bike places, then a place that had a kids bike. It turns out that the pine forests were about 5 miles from the town, after biking up and down ... several ... hills. Not to mention avoiding dozens of speeding horse-drawn carriages filled with vacationers (mainly Turks). Also, the bikes were, sensibly enough, all mountain bikes, which Silmarien has never ridden, so the first thing she tried to do was kick back to stop the bike, and I had to run and catch her before she shot down the first hill.

So in total we biked about 5 blocks in 45 minutes, with no sign of pine or forest, and turned around and brought the bikes back and got back on the ferry. A bit of a disappointment.

However, our luck improved after we got back to Istanbul as the Spice Bazaar was still open and we spent a while walking through it and even haggling with the merchants over what amount of kebab spice was too little to be worth their time. The spice bazaar is also a covered bazaar, but a bit more like what I was expecting compared to the Grand Bazaar, which is really the world's first shopping mall. When we got out of the bazaar, we recognized where we were -- exactly where we had walked the first night in Istanbul. It was nice to walk through it again with more knowledge of what we were seeing. Eventually we got back to our hotel, and then went to dinner at our favorite place. Typical -- we finally find a place where we could be "regulars", and its halfway across the world. I ordered pistachio kebab (for the third day in a row) and apple tea (they remembered to bring me honey, which I thought was really touching) and we took pictures with our waiter and the maitre d', then had dessert at our local dessert cart, then walked up and down the street, which is filled with souvenir shops and restaraunts. All the maitre d's try to get you into their place, and when you say you've already eaten, they say, "you will come tomorrow night" so we told them all no, its our last night in Istanbul...

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Photos

Signage that disappointed Jershon
It read "Jumping from the boat is DANGEROUS and FORBIDDEN."

In our neighborhood...
The 4 Seasons Hotel -- not where we stayed

In our neighborhood...
around the corner -- also not where we stayed.

In our neighborhood...
Marmara Guesthouse, where we stayed

In our neighborhood...
A souvenir shop

In our neighborhood...
The Maitre d' where we ate

In our neighborhood...
Our waiter

In our neighborhood...
Lavash

In our neighborhood...
The dessert cart guy